A new roadmap for global chemicals management has been adopted following an international conference. This brought together governments and companies, which were urged by the UN on Saturday September 30 to go “still beyond what was agreed”. This 5e International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5), organized under the aegis of the international organization, was just held in Bonn, Germany, this week. It led to a new “global chemicals framework”.
“Based on 28 objectives, the framework sets out a roadmap for countries as well as stakeholders to collaboratively address the life cycle of chemicals, including production and waste”, welcomes the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in a press release. This frame “newly adopted calls for the prevention of illegal trade and trafficking of chemicals and waste, the implementation of national legal frameworks and the phase-out of highly hazardous pesticides in agriculture by 2035”further details UNEP.
It also advocates a transition towards safer and more sustainable chemical alternatives, responsible management of chemicals in several sectors (industry, agriculture, health, etc.) and improving transparency and access to data concerning these products and their associated risks.
Paris welcomes the new framework
“I call on governments, the chemical industry and all those involved to go further than agreed to protect people and the planet”urged Inger Andersen, the executive director of UNEP. “Delayed or partial implementation would come back to haunt us in the form of more deaths, more attacks on nature and economic losses”she warned, quoted in the press release.
France, for its part, welcomed this new framework on Saturday “which will advance progress towards a planet free from damage caused by chemicals and waste for a safe, healthy and sustainable future”. “This Bonn agreement completes, alongside the Paris agreement [sur le climat] and the Kunming-Montreal agreement [sur la biodiversité]the commitments made by the international community to put an end to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution”underlined the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, in a press release.